Friday, April 3, 2015

Little Blue Truck Book & Sensory Play Activity for Preschoolers

This post contains affiliate links. Read my disclosure policy for more details.Little Blue Truck by Alice Schertle is one of our favorite books. It covers our two favorite subjects - farm animals and trucks! It's the story of a little blue truck and his animal friends who help a dump truck get unstuck from some mud, all while teaching a valuable lesson about friendship. Since my boys love it so much, I thought we'd put together a fun sensory activity to bring the story to life.

Mix up your sand foam in the bin. I doubled the recipe and added a little more sand, so ours was a bit crumbly. Experiment until you get the texture you like.

Add in your animals & trucks. This activity can get a little messy, so be sure to put a sheet under your bin or play outside.

I started by reading the story with my boys. As each animal greeted the Blue Truck in the book, we picked them out of our bin and repeated what sounds they made.

Then I invited them to act out what happened in the story as I read.

Here's Toad coming to the rescue!

And the dump truck and Blue are finally unstuck.

Once we finished reading, I just let them play. They loved scooping and dumping the sand foam with the dump truck.

This is a wonderfully simple sensory activity that entertained my boys all morning. And when they woke up from their nap they wanted to play again! I love activities that involve their favorite books and help to make the stories come alive. These activities reinforce their early love of books and reading.

We had Duck in The Truck and I wish still had it but we got rid of it after my son kind of 'grew out of' the book. I actually donated it to the library and did borrow it a couple of times so my daughter could enjoy it. Great book and this activity goes along perfectly with the story! Thanks for sharing at our FB Share Day, pinning!

Your blog is fantastic, and this is an epic idea! I love it! My kids would love this, from creating the sand foam to playing in the sensory bin. We haven't read that book before but it looks super cute, and I love the "characters" in your bin. And who would have thought of repurposing a baby bath as a sensory bin?!?!?! Ours has all sorts of bumps for an infant, but that would be perfect for driving cars up, ha ha. I had never heard of sand foam before, thanks for sharing!

Thanks so much for linking up at #favoritethingsfriday! I haven't seen your blog before and it was a ton of fun to browse, Ill be pinning this! Make sure to add a backlink or button to be eligible to be featured and I hope to see you again this Friday (if you are like me and forget, I made a special newsletter reminder, just a weekly shout out to remember to link up on thursdays, its under the post if you are interested)